NASA’s new ‘IXS Enterprise’ is a spaceship worthy of James T. Kirk

This is a lot of taxpayer finance fluff, but perhaps it could be put to good use in an educational science/entertainment program. The Warp drive is not a reality, but perhaps the images of the IXS Enterprise could be used as a teaching tool similar to the hypothetical "Starship of the imagination" used in the miniseries Cosmos. It is an excellent design for a starship, of the science fiction variety and is worthy of its own television show, maybe to "explore" what really is out there, as known and hypothesized by scientists today instead of the "Klingons and the Romulans".

I'd say the Saucer section would be where the artificial gravity is generated, it is a third warp ring within the main two Drive warp rings, the third one just warps space enough to create a 1-g environment within the crew cabin.

NASA’s new ‘IXS Enterprise’ is a spaceship worthy of James T. Kirk

Above: The concept art for what a theoretical warp drive-enabled NASA spacecraft could look like.

Image Credit: Mark Rademaker/Flickr

June 11, 2014 12:06 PM Tom Cheredar

NASA scientist Harold White unveiled a new concept design for a spaceship with a faster-than-light-speed warp drive engine yesterday that most sci-fi fans will probably describe as gorgeous.

It also features the most famous spaceship name known to humanity, the Enterprise, an obvious nod to sci-fi series Star Trek.

As Star Trek star LeVar Burton noted in an interview with VentureBeat, sometimes art imitates life, and sometimes life imitates art — especially when it comes to inspiring new gadgets and technologies.

To be clear, we haven’t yet figured out how to create a warp drive, but that isn’t stopping White from imagining what a warp drive-powered vehicle might look like. For the concept, he teamed up with artist Mark Rademaker, whose background includes designing spaceships for Star Trek novels and other stories within the Trek universe.

Re: NASA’s new ‘IXS Enterprise’ is a spaceship worthy of James T. Kirk

This ship is still fictional, but way cool.

The doctoral thesis for Dr. Miguel Alcubierre was how to build warp drive for real. He reverse calculated General Relativity to show how warp drive would work. It required a mass as large as Jupiter in front of the spacecraft, and another equal mass behind composed of negative matter. Not antimatter, I said negative matter, composed of negative energy so it produces negative gravity. Gravity from the mass in front would pull, while gravity from the negative matter mass behind would push. The result is space between is "warped" to produce faster than light drive. It should work, the physics works, the math works. The problem is you have to carry around two planets. That's gone from completely impossible to completely impractical. That's a major step forward!

Dr. Harold White has been working to further optimize the process. To make it more energy efficient so you don't require a mass as large as a planet. He got it down to energy that is practical. It now requires a nuclear fusion reactor. The energy is now an appropriate amount, something a spacecrat could actually carry. Of course it still requires negative matter, something that physics says theoretically should exist, but no one has proven actually does. And no one has developed a fusion reactor to produce more energy than it consumes. So this still has problems. But definately getting there.

Here's an image of Dr. Alcubierre's ship

Dr. White's design would use two rings: one for regular mass in front, the other for negative mass behind.

When Star Trek was first created in the 1960s, an artist was hired to design the Enterprise. One design they didn't use was later incorporated in the first movie. They re-wrote the story to say this was an earlier Enterprise. The movie had a images of "past" ships called Enterprise on display of the recreational deck. The images showed a wooden sailing ship, aircraft carrier, the Space Shuttle Enterprise, then the first warp ship called XCV-330, then the Constitution class Enterprise from the 1960s TV show. The "XCV-330" was the design not used, the one they later claimed was a designed in the early to mid-21st century. It was the first ship to travel to Alpha Centauri. Wait a minute! This is the early to mid-21st century. Way cool! That ship looked like this...

Re: NASA’s new ‘IXS Enterprise’ is a spaceship worthy of James T. Kirk

Re: NASA’s new ‘IXS Enterprise’ is a spaceship worthy of James T. Kirk

NASA did a lot of this stuff in the late 1970s when it wasn't doing much with manned space, studies on O'Neill colonies for instance, I would say we are in another such era. These resources can be used in later science fiction shows as we got all these nice illustrations, it would be a shame to let them go to waste. I would like to see a "Star Trek Novel" Featuring the IXS Enterprise as shown in these illustrations, I think that would be great!